The shocking facts which are now surfacing regarding the SC/ ST Scholarship scam indicate that many senior officers may land themselves in the soup once the SIT probe is completed. One thing is clear after the initial probe that the verification and documentation had not been done in the scholarship distribution.
After the arrest of five people, including the younger brother of Manglaur MLA Qazi Nizamuddin of the Congress, sources said that the MLA himself is also on the team's radar. He is the trustee of a college which is under cloud, post-investigation. The role of the then social welfare officer is also suspicious, sources added.
The college which had been constructed in 2005 on the banks of Gangnehar had not run properly, but the proprietors of the college had allegedly siphoned off scholarship funds from the social welfare department by submitting a fake list of students. It has been revealed that the Manglaur legislator's brother Nooruddin and his partners had closed the institution in 2014 due to its non- accreditation by the education council. However, the scholarship amount had allegedly continued despite the closure of the college and its website.
The college had received the scholarship for the students from the year 2012 to 2015 while students had stopped coming to the college in 2011 itself. At one point of time, there were just 50 students studying in the college
The SIT team probing the scam worth Rs 2.5 crore had arrested five people so far in the matter — Qazi Nooruddin, Pradip Agarwal, Sanjay Bansal, Ankur Sharma and Om Tyagi. Qazi Nooruddin is younger brother of Manglaur MLA Qazi Nizamuddin. Pradip Agarwal is the son of a reputed businessman from Manglaur and Sanjay Bansal is a resident of Dehradun.
Notably, the inspecting team has till date scanned five colleges based in the district and found a scam worth several crores of rupees.